SHARK 2 Ep 11-12 Review

Note: this was a double episode, and is alternately referred to as Ep 11 as well as Ep 11 and 12.

So this is it – the last hour of SHARK Season 2. Right at the end of the previous episode and going into the beginning of this one, we get the ridiculous setup for the climactic battle between BtS and Cloud5 – that the two bands will face-off in front of fans again, and if Cloud5 loses, they’ll have to disband.

Now, even the most gullible viewer would have to scratch their heads at this. How can a record company force a band to disband? Even if the band is under contract, nothing in that contract could ever allow the company to compel the members to disassociate. At the most extreme (and I can’t think of a case of this) the group might have to change its name, but it’s relatively common for bands to switch labels. There are some peculiar situations – like Johnny’s – where everything is vertically integrated, but that’s not how it works when a label signs an independent rock group. The group retains certain rights – like the right to exist and to freely assemble.

Apparently, Matsuyuki wants to produce just one new group, and the company is willing to lose the potential profits from Cloud5 on his whim. First of all, what a lazy bum, not to mention a liar. But in any case the situation then should be that Cloud5 simply gets dropped from the company roster and becomes an independent band. I wonder if any other record company might want to take a chance on a popular young group that was just dumped by a label because their producer was an asshole?

And at what point do the members of Cloud5 all walk into Matsuyuki’s office and tell him to shove it? If, after having been manipulated as they have been, they are just going to be thrilled to be under Matsuyuki’s umbrella again, what sympathy do they deserve?

Why do they look so calm and even happy? Why aren’t they outraged by this ultimatum and storming up to see Matsuyuki? Even if they’re confident that they’ll win, isn’t it tiresome to be repeatedly pitted against BtS, which is a very different group with a totally different style? Both the writing and the acting was completely lacking in the passion necessary to pull off a finale.

And in the middle of this . . .

. . . we get another Makoto scene. They discover a CD with the first song Saku (Shigeoka Daiki) recorded back in high school – one that got Kota (Yasui Kentaro) excited. So . . . this is still all about Kota, eh? And will this song be the one he decides to perform in the competition?

Oh, and Makoto finally realizes that they should have told Kota that the little fish had died instead of lying to Kota. No real explanation how she suddenly saw the light. Here’s my theory: Kota actually knew they had lied to him about the fish the whole time, and that’s really why he’s been so pissed with them.

In the next scene, we see that Saku can’t seem to write a song, and right at that moment Ichika (Yamashita Rio) enters with a song that Matsuyuki wrote. At this rate, maybe the band should call it quits, after all.

In the Matsuyuki office, Samantha (IVAN) notes that Matsuyuki wrote that song for top group, and wondered whether it was all right to give it to Cloud5.

Matsuyuki says that since Cloud5 will be defunct soon, this is his way to compensate them. Samantha then reveals that it was his plan from the start to use Cloud5 to promote BtS, which is once again not how businesses are run. Using rivalries as a promotion tool is fine and quite common, but that doesn’t require one group to be trodden on and then dumped. Even in the case of a weak group like Cloud5, there’s no harm in keeping them around and to continue to take a huge cut of their meager sales.

As with so much dialogue in this series, none of what Matsuyuki says makes any sense. He should just stick to talking about drama.

Back with the group members, even Ichika says they should just use Matsuyuki’s song. Well, since they don’t have any alternatives (both of their singles were redone by Matsuyuki and Saku hasn’t mentioned that old song he found), what else is she supposed to say? If they have to rely on Saku’s ability to write a new song, it’s hopeless.

On the other hand, maybe Ichika wants Cloud5 to fail so Kai (Hamada Takahiro) can go back to SHARK.

I don’t have a clue why Kai is talking about becoming adults. Strange inability to write coherent dialogue again. I think the writers just pulled lines from a box of common Japanese drama platitudes and randomly stuck them into the script. Maybe as a dare.

So Cloud5 decides that they should go ahead with Matsuyuki’s song, but we know this is all just stalling because this song won’t work and Saku has to use one of his own songs – probably that old one – to win the day. Can you get any more predictable than this?

Cue the random encounter with Kota, who happens to know that Saku can’t compose a song. Was he listening with his ear pressed to the door or something? Anyway, more Kota sniping here. I got tired of this three or four episodes ago.

Kai deserves some sniping, too, so Asahi (Iwahashi Genki) stops by to tell him how horrible he is. Maybe Cloud5 just needs to find a new location to practice and write music – this environment is clearly too negative.

Cloud5 continues to delude themselves, repeating over and over again that they’re doing the right thing by using Matsuyuki’s song to convince themselves even though they all know that the writers want Saku to use one of his own songs, which is the writers wanted from episode one and what Saku did (to the annoyance of Aruto all the way back there). Do you suppose Saku will change which song he’s going to do and not tell Aruto this time, too?

And that’s the thing – we’re back to episode one again, aren’t we?

Haruya (Hagiya Keigo) says a friend asked “since when did Cloud5 become TV personalities?” and somehow ends up wondering whether Cloud5 was just being used to create buzz – not a conclusion that could actually be derived from what his friend said. Haruya has no basis to make this comment, but the writers felt it convenient to give him the thought anyway, so they did. Why would a popular group ever be surprised that they were create buzz, getting on the cover of magazines, and being covered on TV?

Another Makoto scene. She says the same sorts of things she always says. In fact, it’s a lot like what she said in episode one, except with more melodrama and shouting.

Oh, we’re going to get a BtS scene? That’s nice.

Unfortunately, they’re doing the same thing we’ve seen in all their scenes so far, too. It’s Kota and Azuma (Jinguji Yuta) getting in each other’s face again. Doesn’t go any further, either.

At this point, there’s really nothing more to the story except the final battle and whether Saku gets his act together, so the writers try to fill the time with meaningless stuff. Unfortunately, this next bit is worse than meaningless – can you believe the guy at the guitar store says that music doesn’t convey anything!?

Well, I guess that’s why he just sells guitars instead of being in a band. For those with any knowledge of music, it’s pretty clear that it can convey all sorts of meaning. Jimi Hendrix playing the U.S. national anthem at Woodstock comes to mind. The shopkeeper says that you can’t order a glass of water at a restaurant by playing your guitar, but that’s just a failure of imagination rather than a limitation of music. If the performance of the music was all that mattered, then would people prefer some classical composers over others? Wouldn’t it just be a matter of the orchestra which performed the piece?

Oh, no. Not more of this.

Saku says what we all already knew – that it was all his fault. This was just a way to further their romantic connection, though.

More filler.

More Makoto.

And finally we get to the main event. So, will Saku really accept the guitar shop guy’s advice that the only the performance matters (which is really horrible and counter to the professed philosophy of the series so far) or will he pull out that song mentioned in the beginning? It’s really hard for him to change what the band is going to do now, but then again we’re only halfway through this finale.

We actually start out watching a holdover from the first season – the rival to SHARK in exactly the parallel situation. If this is a competition between bands, shouldn’t this first band be in the running, too?

Anyway, BtS is up first between the two main acts, and if we learned anything from the previous episodes, it’s to always go last in these things. For some reason, Asahi seems nervous even though we haven’t seen any indication of that in his character before.

Why does Matsuyuki seem so grim in this episode? It’s like he was told at the start of this episode that he was actually the bad guy.

I can’t say much about the rest of the episode without getting spoilerish, but I will point out that the voting on this competition was off the scale – they were getting more votes on this than we see on Kouhaku, for heaven’s sake. Even if people were allowed to vote multiple times with a simple click, it’s tough to credit it.

Oh, and why did they make it seem like the group would only be able to do one song when they were free to do a whole set? It was just their last song that they were stressing over.

Don’t get me started with the way they randomly dumped flashbacks in the middle of the set – in sharp contrast to the artful and poignant way the flashbacks were worked into the last episode of the first season.

Finally, at the very end of the show, we get something interesting:

Now, that should have been part of the show, and SHARK should have started competing with the other two groups. Oh, well.

This season was horrible, and not worth the title of “SHARK”. Whatever the faults of the first season of SHARK – and they were few – it had a coherent plot, a compelling main character, clear progression, and a spectacular finale. This season was a pale imitation produced by people who can’t write.

The plot didn’t progress – the last episode seemed to be dealing with the same issues as the first. Without plot progress, the pace was technically nonexistent. The dialogue was often incoherent or otherwise written purely for the convenience of the writers instead of having logical flow. Lots of stock lines and not much meaning.

The most interesting plot element – BtS – was underdeveloped to the extreme. Asahi was the character with the most developed backstory and the most intriguing motivation, but while that was fleshed out, nothing came of it. Kai never explained himself properly to Asahi, Asahi never met Mizuki or the rest of SHARK, the Asahi-Kota-Azuma dynamic was just thrown in there without any thought.

Psychology was totally out the window in this season. The characterizations were completely unbelievable – except maybe for Aruto and Asahi, all the characters were ridiculously inconsistent. These should have been idealistic young men pursuing their dreams (like SHARK), but instead they were whiny, directionless, and had a strange propensity to lie. It is impossible to think how Cloud5 could ever have become a group given the apparent psychology of its members, and the writers didn’t even try to depict their backstory – only brief Saku-Kota flashbacks that showed them the complete opposite of the way they are in the present.

The acting eventually became very easy to assess for everyone except Shigeoka-kun and Hamada-kun, who were given lamentable lines. In the acting lead was clearly Abe Aran-kun, and he’s been rewarded with the lead role in the next drama in this time slot as well as plenty of additional attention. Once he got some lines, Hagiya-kun did an excellent job, especially since this character seemed very different from his normal personality. I hope we get to see him in a stronger role eventually, though. Yasui Kentaro-kun did a great job being hateful, but was handicapped by repetitive lines – he seemed to be saying the same thing episode after episode. Iwahashi Genki-kun got one episode where he showed that he could show two very different sides to the same character, but otherwise didn’t get nearly the time or the lines that he should have. The rest of BtS didn’t get enough time to be assessed. Yamashita Rio-san was unimpeachable, with her more mature presentation of this character. Kaede-san . . . I don’t think the horrible lines sufficiently explained my strong aversion to her scenes.

It was a mess. But there are interesting messes – this was not one of those. This was a mess that just sat there. We never cared what happened to Cloud5, and I was often tempted to root against them. In the end of the series, Saku was essentially struggling with the exact same issue he faced in episode one. What was this series about?

8 Comments:

Thank you very much for your review. I agree with you. This season was properly awful. Even if season 1 was full of flaws, it was at least endearing, especially because of “Mizuki” and his relationship with “Kaede” and the growing friendship with his other band members.
This 2nd season was a total mess and I hated the spineless and bland Kai. So different than the stubborn Kai from the first season! It was like the writers didn’t watch the 1st season. In fact, Kai from season 1 and Kai from season 2 were 2 different persons.

For me, this 2nd season wasn’t showing indie bands at all. They were explaining Johnny’s functioning: Group members acting like drama queens and fabricated bands. That’s more or less how I see JE: Pretty teenage boys, drama queens, stupid rules for “punishing” members for “bad behaviour” creating some buzz around the group, creating some rivalry between groups, and never showing a kiss or anything that could hurt the fangirl base’s heart and dream of becoming someday the “elected one”.
What the guitar shop owner and Matsuyuki said reflect what Johnny’s thinks, IMHO. Music, for them, is only there to make money, loads of money. They don’t care about the quality of the music or the feeling that it conveys. They want pretty boys with a feminine look who don’t look endangering for young teenage girls or insecure young females. They don’t care about real talent, or the message conveyed by the song. The only important thing is $$$$. Pretty faces and a bit of drama (with “punishment” from time to time, like a strict parent would scold their children) with cheesy songs do the trick.

For me, Shark 2 is JE explained to their fans. When I read some JE’s (or AKB’s) fan comments sometimes, I find it appalling how some of these people agree that the group members shall be harshly scolded for drinking, dating or smoking. They dream of “eternally pure and virgin idols”. Seriously, we are all flawed human beings,and everybody has the right to live their life as their wish. I don’t smoke, almost never drink and I prefer long and stable relationships. But seriously, for me, music is way more important than knowing that my idol is or not the purest human being on Earth. People who focus more on “physical attractiveness” (what I find doubtful, because for me, most JE members don’t look attractive for looking way too much like little boys) or “purity” are clearly not interested in music and art. They are just egotistical people who live in a dream, and want to see their idols like beautiful birds in a cage, refusing them any freedom to leave the cage or to lose some of their beautiful feathers… The parrot shall only repeat what his owner said and never speak or think by itself… The monkey shall always do the tricks that his master taught him. Otherwise, he would be punished… Sad, sad, sad that most of the fan base still think that idols are animals in a zoo! (i hate zoos, BTW…).

I won’t comment on everything, because this is your idea of both agencies and I m not trying to pick up a fight🙂. I won’t comment on your perception of their attractiveness, physical appearance, or how you see their music, or you perception of idol but more on ” objective” point of view.

I will say that JE doesn’t care about of age smoking, drinking or even girlfriend to be honest. For the first two, as long as you are over 20 you are perfectly OK to do that. The only boys who got punished for smoking and drinking were underage. ( as proven by the many many times they all said they drank alcochol it s really not a taboo in Japan at all it s super common or for example Nakajima Yuto from Hey Say JUMP pictures last week in tabloid looking completely smashed. Everyone even the tabloid was fondly saying he was mainly having fun, stating he was like any other college boy of his age) No-one ever got punished for smoking despite pictures of them smoking being sold by paparazzis,for example.

In Japan, it’s illegal to smoke or drink if you are under 20 , so it is more a matter of law, than anything else. Also it does not reflect good on the agency ( even😉 agencies with no idol. It makes it look like there is chaos, and well…It s illegal)

It s not fans who want them to be punished ( in fact, you would be surprised by the amount of things japanese fandom knows about some of their ” bad” /underage behaviour, and how muh they ”hide” from tabloids, social media, and overall JE I remember a girl getting angry comments all over twitter because she saw some 15yo juniors misbehaving //nothing illegal btw // and everyone, every single comment in the hundreds she got, was about how she shouldn’t post them on twitter, let alone as she said she wanted to do, send them to JE so they would get punished. Sure they were stupid to do that, but getting them punished was for every commenter, way too much, especially since as they pointed out she must have been stalking them.

Girlfriend issue is overrated to be fair. You re probably not in the fandom, but if you were you would know that truly fans don’t care I mean, Yabu Kota from Hey!Say!JUMP got many pictures of him with his girlfriend leaked all over twitter and the tabloids, we even got the blog of the girl and her name, but everyone and I mean it, everyone, was defending them. People were disgusted that someone would leak such private pictures and everyone was ” It ‘s his private life.No-one should care”. We got leaked pictures both in May and June, and those in June were even ” worst” you would think, and yet fans still were adamant about that. ( Yabu chan even thanked fans on a JWEB ). Keito from HSJ never got as popular as when he had his pictures with his girlfriend leaked, and to be honest it was really a common knowledge he got one. Kamenashi Kazuya from KAT-TUN was reported with a girl during a concert he went to and fans were all congratulating him, especially since she was beautiful, just like they did for Nakamaru from the same band. Tegoshi( NEWS) blond girlfriend was even common knowledge in international fandom, like Yamapi’s previous french girlfriend.

They also don’t get punished for that Oo We have many boys debuted AND Juniors who got in tabloids for that, and they didn’t get any punishment ( even not famous Jrs lol)

Please, don’t think fans are all screaming against them not to have a girlfriend of boyfriend. There are, of course. They are crazy people everywhere after all, but in majority ( and a laaaaaaaaaaarge majority as seen in scandals from many bands and Juniors) fans just don’t care about that. They want the boys happy ( that’s what most fans said in relation to for example Yabu-chan s scandals) and in the band/in JE. What they do in private life, is private.

To be fair, most of the annoyed fans who don’t want them dating etc are international fans ( and I can tell you, we re not important lol In both terms of sales, and number. So …Who cares ? if we have more crazies.)

Also, you should know that there are dramas where the boys kiss the girls ( yes, with Johnny’s too) and that there is even a whole tv program dedicated to that ( Yamapi s otona no kiss😉 and it’s not the only one)

These are only two examples, but there are others🙂

Honestly, the only things fans were worried was that any of them would leave the band. That was their worst fear ( as seen in the Yabu-chan scandal. Fans were all OK for him to even get married to her have children etc whenever he wants, as long as he stays in the band)

AKB is a bit the same. Mariko was supposed to be with Koichi from Kinki Kids and they made fun of it, Sasshi got to be first last year, and almost got first this year despite her scandals. No AKB has been taken off the band as far as I know, for dating a boy. Sasshi got a lol punishement, because her punishment made her got to HKT48 and management pushed for her to be everywhere. We never saw her has much as during her punishment lol The girls can drink too

But t s true that when it comes to dating scandal, women and girls are usually much more victim of pb that would arrive.

Also, there is no rivalry announced between Js groups ( and probably AKB, in the end. Even NG46 isn’t really their rival haha). This is why they cannot accept awards, so that the boys wouldn’t be against each others.

I will also say that some of the most famous and well liked Js, Jrs, and AKB members are actually the ones who have no drama, or didn’t get any drama. For example ? Arashi. It s not really in Js interest ( at all) to have underage drinking scandal ) or debut a group in order for it to disappear soon so that another one would get on top as Matsuyuki-san said he did.

While Johnny’s involves bands that are put together, once they debut, Johnny’s has no history of ordering them to disband (though they sometimes decide to do that on their own). Even Johnny’s adheres to the economic imperative of squeezing profit from everyone. So, I doubt the writers got their idea from Johnny’s. I think they had very little touch with reality outside of their own imagination.

I also have to correct you on Johnny’s members being drama queens – by the internal culture of Johnny’s, they hardly ever voice complaints about anything. Johnny’s expects a can-do attitude from its members, not constant moping. There are dysfunctional groups, but those are very obviously outweighed by functional groups. To the best of my knowledge, group members have only left their group either of their own free will or because of breaking the law.

Teenaged Johnny’s are discouraged from dating, but adults are much more free to start relationship than female idols. Kimura Takuya-san, probably the single most popular member of Johnny’s, seems to have no trouble retaining his fans despite having a wife and kids. And if he’s allowed to do it, the Johnny’s members who aspire to be as popular as him certainly don’t see starting a relationship as an obstacle. I have seen fans disparage female idols for starting relationships, but in general the female fanbase of male idols is more supportive. There will always be idiots, though.

You seem to have a lot of hatred toward Johnny’s, and I’m not sure where that is coming from. Considering you enjoyed the first season of SHARK, you should at least concede that the boys have talent (if only for acting, but contrary to what people generally think, I view Johnny’s as a stage-oriented agency that values acting skills). But instead you disparage then, saying that they’re only “pretty boys with a feminine look who don’t look endangering for young teenage girls . . .” I find it difficult to accept those words because, obviously, I’m neither a teenage girl, nor do I care whether they’re pretty or not, yet somehow I’m a Johnny’s fan. Why? Because they work very, very hard, and the agency supports them for their entire careers instead of throwing them out when they’re in their twenties. I get encouraged by seeing young people work so hard to fulfill their dreams, and I wish them all the best. I wish AKB members the best, too, but I dislike the management model.

SHARK 2 has nothing to do even with what you claimed Johnny’s to be. Matsuyuki never said he favored pretty boys, nor did he pick the group with less talent – BtS was clearly portrayed as being more talented and independent. Nowhere was there any discussion of finding members who were more acceptable to insecure girls. While Matsuyuki said that music didn’t matter, he clearly didn’t believe it, because he was trying to goad Saku into returning to the music that made Cloud5 successful. Also, Asahi wrote his own music and Matsuyuki favored him for that, so clearly the message was that writing your own music is good.

I m sorry for the previous comment, I just wanted to give my opinion on some of the matter the previous user said. ^^

Miracle did not happen, I still don’t like Cloud5 as a band, nor do want to root for them at all. I dislike Saku so much, it s almost unbelievable – and I loved him at first/

I agree with everything you said. There were so many plot issues,so many pb in characterization, most character made no sense at all ( last episode and 10 are especially ridic and mind blowing in that sense ). It s been 11 -12 episode of 20 min and I feel like NOTHING really changed, when they told me it totally does

This whole drama was even more annoying because I could see what they could have done. And it’s infuriating. I mean, clearly they should jhave focused on BtS instead of Cloud5…And everything happening to Cloud5( which is actually not that much)could have happened off camera, and we would know either from some scenes directly with them, or from what BtS characters etc would have told us.

I honestly think a BtS centered drama could have gone better. WAY better. Such a miss DX

Was Kota actually the true the main character ? At this point, I really don’t understand. He has been the center of all attention, even if he was mean etc. Most conversation and action had a link with him or were about him Every single episode ( but for 2) were centered around him and Saku s obession for him. … At least there was some change in Kota?.

I did not care at all about Saku’s comment at the end lol As in, not at all. I even foudn if obnoxious …Also, that was weird, and once again back to SHARK 1 (they even put Shinobu’s part here).

LOL the issue with Cloud5 voting is that they got 2 songs instead of 1 like the others (at least from what we heard from others)

I have to say though, I liked the end. I usually didn’t in 20min drama but here I liked it very much. They all get to debut, and I really really like Kota s crying scene at the end. I think Yasui did a marvelous job through this serie despite how weird his character was. I really liked that scene, and then Asahi’s comment. Though probably because I was already team Kota since he joined the band, and especially because really, I m proud of Yasui haha So biaised😛

Also, REbirth ( and with a whole new song! This time no Kazuki-kun behind it! Only Ayumu’s song was original and even then, it was created during Kazuki-kun’s time)

…I did not get what was Jinguji’s character issue. I mean, wasn’t the issue with Jinguji created BECAUSE they added Kota and he felt threatened in a way and yet too superior to him ? It feels like they did that only to show some pb within BTS, make Cloud5 more likeable, and get Kota to be accepted in his band later on. +

I m not even sure what the drama was all about. What was the ” moral” of the story at the end ? That changing things can be better ?????? But didn’t Saku actually get back to point 0 by using a song from HS, exactly what Kota wanted him to do even in episode 1 because he is the one who believes the most in him ???? Yet, Asahi seems to think it’s better for Kota to be with them (and for Kai with Cloud5 though he never saw SHARK with Mizuki before, as far as we know). Saku looks more leader like, but I don’t even get what was actually the central theme of the story.

Not songs, because we didn’t get enough of them through episodes. Not struggle for a debuted group because they didn’t act like a band that was together for years and get to be recognized and with strong bonds between all of them and a leader….And the music shop seller comment, seems to go against the idea of music…

What was the drama about ?

Did the love story got resolved btw ? I need to check that…..

I m not even speaking about all this was a two step forward, one step back, each time we think things changed. And I don’t see how they changed. I don’t see why I should or would root for Cloud5, why Saku could appear as a real strong leader, why they seem all closer, why they are now better as 4 cloud5 and 5 BtS, and as far as we know at least 5 Shark.

I didn’t not get Matsuyuki-san character ????? For episodes he was all against Cloud5, and rooting against them, and then suddenly he did all that because he wanted them to succeed ? What ?Or was he doing all that because he knew what Saku could REALLY do and wanted a reaction ????That seemed to be implied, but it makes no sense.

Episode 10 and 11 were the worst, or maybe because of episode 6 and especially 7 8 and 9 got better, it made these episodes looks more terrible.

For all my love for the cast, and of SHARK 1, + happiness to see their dream come true in terms of irl jobs, there better NOT be a season 3, SP or movie planned at some point omg. SHARK is the proof that some things should NEVER get sequels omg. lol

Terrible drama, and not in a good way. At least they made us discover some actors like Genki, and get a better sense or vision of some other as you said.

No problem – completely justified. I wrote my own response as well, and I think we broadly hit on the same points, except I noted that the criticisms of Johnny’s mentioned by the other commenter had nothing to do with what happened in SHARK 2. You were much more thorough, though, as is your way.🙂

I think either one of us could have written a much better drama than this, simply by using the original SHARK properly and also spending most of the time on BtS. The less we focused on Cloud5, the more acceptable their struggles and attempts to overcome them would have been – we would only have been told that story once, instead of three times. I wouldn’t have put Cloud5 off camera, but we really only needed the material from the first episode or so, right? Just the argument about which version of the song to use, Kota leaving and joining BtS, Saku deciding to go with his original version, and Kota in tears after seeing the choice Saku made. If Aruto being mad about not going with Matsuyuki’s version in the first episode was really a thing, why wasn’t he mad about the same thing in the last episode? He was still pushing for Matsuyuki’s version, after all.

So yeah, I think they could have put all of that in without taking too much time, and I think there should have been a final battle between SHARK, BtS, and Cloud5, with Mizuki making a triumphant comeback. BtS would have been popular, but missing discipline, and while Kota starts to try to get discipline in the group, it’s not in time to win against SHARK or Cloud5 (with Saku making the right decision about which song to do). But even though BtS loses, they live to fight another day.

And that’s the sort of story an actual writer thinks up. I don’t know who was working on the staff of this drama, but to call them writers is laughable.

Kota can’t be the main character, because we spent way too long watching Saku doing nothing, and Kota was taken out for an entire episode. Just because a character changes, that doesn’t make them the main character. The main character is the person through whose eyes we see the story, and that was primarily Saku and occasionally Kai. Sometimes it bounced to other characters like Ichika, but only rarely.

They totally didn’t explain what the issue with Jinguji-kun’s character was! I was very angry about that, because that’s entirely inexcusable. Kota just said that he wasn’t doing things seriously, and that’s supposed to mean something and be absolutely true. The problem here is simple: the writers don’t know anything about music, so they had little idea what a person could be doing wrong. Also, they didn’t care about developing the character.

The moral of the story? Just stick to the song you wrote in high school – nothing you do after that is any good.🙂

That was the weakest attempt at a romantic subplot ever. I hate romantic subplots, but that’s because they’re rarely done properly. And this one was especially shameful because the first season of SHARK had a very well executed one.

Matsuyuki is one of those unfortunate people who thinks that people only grow by experiencing pain and strife. And that probably reflects the psychology of the writers as well. In reality, he could have resolved this simply by telling Saku to step up his songwriting game, giving Saku a pat on the back, and telling the Cloud5 group leader that he had confidence that Saku could write better songs.

By the way, right now we don’t even know if Saku can still write good songs. All we know is that he once wrote a good song in high school.

I won’t agree that SHARK should never have gotten a sequel – I think we both came up with pretty solid ideas of what a proper sequel should have looked like. The problem was that SHARK 2 had horrible writers, not that a sequel was a bad idea.

Thanks for commenting! Now . . . I have to deal with the dreaded summer romantic drama. I’m hoping Kinkyori Renai isn’t as tedious as Sprout, or I’ll never survive. I don’t see any subber listed for it yet – I hope someone will pick it up, or it’ll be the first drama in this time slot that didn’t get subtitle support.

Oh yes, that’s exactly what I meant for getting Cloud5 off camera. I didn’t mean not seeing them at all, but just…That most things that happened in this season with them but for the most important things, would be off camera. We would of course see Kota changing bands etc…Just that the focus would be BTS

Oh, I saw Arisu (she subbed Bad Boys J and 49 on her LJ) mentioning over twitter that she would sub the drama. I don’t know if she already subbed first episode. I have to say, I quite liked first episode for the moment.